As My Last Bastion Falls

Back in 2022, Larry Liebman was in Columbus for the Ohio Show, and he spent a night or two at our place so he could fully take in the museum. He did not come empty handed: Larry brought with him some of the pieces he has collected made by Louis Tamis & Son, the New York jeweler’s firm that made high quality writing instruments both on its own account as well as for luxury retailers such as Tiffany, Cartier and the like.

Larry collects these because he has a distant family connection to LT & Son - he’s tried to explain it to me, and I keep getting confused about who is twice or thrice removed. Most recently, I talked about that in  “Narrowing the Gap” (May 31, 2021: Volume 7, page 156). Larry snapped a few photos with his iPad in preparation of his visit to see what he should bring for better shots; this one was the one I couldn’t wait to lay my hands upon, even if only for a brief photo session:

Yes, it is solid gold - and a two-tone yellow and rose gold to boot.

I recreated this pattern for my Legendary Pencil Company Model 124, which I dubbed the “Trinity.” I wasn’t deifying Tamis’ work - the Trinity reference is rooted in the fact that this same sort of design was used by three distinct makers.

Here, Larry’s LT & Sons pencil is flanked by two examples in my collection. The top one is a magic pencil bearing a W.S. Hicks hallmark. It isn’t stamped very well, but you can make it out near where the pencil emerges:

The one at bottom is a later gold filled pencil made by Mabie Todd & Co. in the late 1930s. These frequently slip under the radar because the imprint is in the center of the pencil:

Now I have to correct something a little bit. On the Legendary Pencil Company’s website listing for the Model 124, I identified the trinity of father, son, and pencil ghost as Louis Tamis & Son, William S. Hicks, and Edward Todd & Co. – not Mabie Todd & Co.

At the time I came up with the Trinity name, I had forgotten about these later Mabie Todds . . . forgivable, I hope, since this was the only models Mabie Todd did in this pattern, while the other three used it with abandon on lots of different things. If it isn’t forgivable, I’d hedge and say we’ll call it three and a half, given the abnormally close relationship between Edward Todd and Hicks.

Mea culpa. Trinity sounds much better than “Foursome” or “Trinity-ish,” so we’ll just chalk up my mistake to brilliant marketing and move on to the other thing Larry wanted to be sure we photographed. 

This solid gold fountain pen has the typical turned-up ball clip used by Edward Todd, Hicks and Louis Tamis – but not by Mabie Todd (see, I knew there was a reason I left Mabie out of the equation). While I can probably rule out Edward Todd, which used a slightly smaller clip, it is a tossup as between the other two, since it isn’t marked for either. This one is marked only for Tiffany & Co.

While we were having fun playing with these things and I had all of my similar stuff out for manhandling, I took a better picture of my LT & Son watch pencil. I had noticed that in the last time I talked about it, I had used only the auction house picture – I think I was so excited to write about it that the article published before the pencil was in my hands. See “Tying In Tamis” (June 18, 2021: Volume 7, page 206):

Over the years, I’ve expressed my disdain for buying solid gold, since I value history more than metal and for the price I can buy more history if the gold is not pure. I’ve also had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about high-faluting names - yeah, I apologize for my recent comparison of Tiffany products to Buckeyes memorabilia and dog turds. For God’s sake, don’t get me started on “precious resins,” either – precious, my butt. At least all I got wrong in my marketing was a model name.

I do cry Uncle on Larry’s solid gold stuff. They are absolutely beautiful and in my opinion, worth more than the metal in them solely based on their artistic merit. I have surrendered myself to the fact that the reason the Tiffany name commands a premium is because the company has earned it.

I have, however, maintained my last bastion of resistance to those bamboo pencils, which are nearly always marked only for the luxury retailer that offered them. LT & Son was the last of the “trinity” to survive, and I believe LT & Son made most if not all of these. They come in pencils as well as ballpoints, and I last visited them in “Dr. Seested, I Presume . . .” (January 18, 2016: Volume 4, page 97). 

Vic Seested and I finally met in person at the DC Show that year, after months of email correspondence. He had brought a spread of Hicks, LT and the like for me to photograph, including his solid gold bamboo pencil, marked both LT & Son and Tiffany:

“Dang, again,” I wrote, “as in dang, that’s ugly, but I do appreciate the attraction to something so distinctive . . . every time I see one, I think to myself to hold one is to look like you have waaaaay too much money. Maybe that is what they were going for.”

I don’t think I was wrong.

Dan Schenkein has recently taken a liking to these metal bamboo figurals, too. Here are his two ballpoints and an LT-marked pencil.

I am gradually developing greater appreciation and fewer objections on principle to these. When my friend Chiaming Chen in Taiwan posted a picture of this Cartier-marked example – in real bamboo, not metal – I quickly jumped on the opportunity to obtain permission to use the images:

It has British 18k hallmarks on the nose, above the Cartier name:

My growing appreciation and waning objections to bamboo pencils finally hit critical mass when I quietly managed to find one of these up for myself. At last I had spotted my prey laying in the weeds, improperly described, and buried in with a bunch of unrelated junk, so I was able to scoop it up at a price I could swallow: 

It actually wasn’t laying too deep in the weeds: since it measures over six inches long, it was more like a giraffe hiding behind a telephone pole in the middle of an open field. Still, nobody else seemed to pick up on what it was. On one nose, it is stamped “Made in Italy” and “laminato oro,” meaning gold filled or plated:

The other end reveals which high-end retailer thought a six-inch, double ended piece of wood sticking out of one’s shirt pocket might be considered a status symbol in certain circles:

Gucci.